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The U.S. Senate has passed a Republican tax-reform package that contains a provision to authorize oil drilling on the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, placing the biological heart of one of our last pristine, untouched places in severe peril.

A year before effectively eliminating Bears Ears and vast portions of Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, then President-elect Trump claimed his administration would honor the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt and "conserve and protect our beautiful natural resources for the next generation including protecting lands."

President Trump has announced his decision to effectively eliminate Bears Ears and vast portions of Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, presumably with an eye toward opening large swaths of land to new uranium and coal mining and other development.

Media are reporting that President Trump will arrive Dec. 4 to make the long-expected proclamation, declining either to visit the monuments or consider the sizeable majority of Utah residents who opposed his administration's punitive review of these and other public lands in the first place.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s has introduced riders to the 2018 Senate Interior Appropriations bill would exempt Alaska’s two national forests, the Tongass National Forest and Chugach National Forest, from the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.